Captains of finance as captive audience

pbest@globeandmail.com

A high-profile crowd turned out bright and early one morning last week to hear Bank of Nova Scotia chief executive officer Rick Waugh and Bank of New York Mellon CEO Bob Kelly take questions from former deputy prime minister John Manley, as well as audience members, on the financial crisis.

It was a non-ecumenical event: Attendees at the breakfast in Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce's headquarters included CIBC chief executive Gerry McCaughey, Brookfield Asset Management head honcho Bruce Flatt, Manulife Financial CEO Don Guloien and Robin Spencer, chief executive officer of Aviva Canada.

The speakers' panel was organized by the Canada Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

One guest, Osler Hoskin & Harcourt lawyer Purdy Crawford - the man who led the fix-up of Canada's frozen $32-billion commercial paper mess - used his time at the question microphone to deliver a mini-speech.

The creation of a single national securities regulator would be a great step, he said.

"The reality is that having a single regulator wouldn't have dealt with our problems that we had in the past, but I think it would be a great step forward," Mr. Crawford said.

(In his push to get a single regulator in place, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has suggested as recently as last Friday that such an entity might have prevented many of the commercial paper headaches this country experienced.)

Mr. Crawford said he chose to share his wisdom with the breakfast audience because he never got the chance to do so in Ottawa.

"I was summoned to go to Ottawa ... to talk about how the system might change," he explained.

"It never happened ... I never heard from Ottawa again."